Ohio Higher Education Computing Council (OHECC) 2023

Conference Track Information

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Track 1: Client Services

Wednesday, May 10

Conducting an Annual Survey of Your IT Outcomes
Presented by Pete Ferris, Miami University
Miami University has conducted an annual survey of its IT outcomes for over the past decade. Recently, the survey platform changed from the Techqual+ interface to Qualtrics for accessibility reasons. Attend this session to learn how to conduct an annual assessment of your IT outcomes, analyze your results, and enjoy an open invitation to compare/contrast your results with other Ohio schools that choose to align and ask the same questions.

IT Service Management Roadmap
Presented by Bob Black, Miami University
Each year our IT Service Management (ITSM) team does a reflection on the last year where we conduct a current state assessment that leads to a target state using the typical -- Where are we now?, Where do we want to be?, How do we get there? -- format that results in a roadmap for each of our formalized practices. We will showcase some examples and talk through our process for building the roadmap as it has matured over the years.

Thursday, May 11

So What's This Agile Thing, Anyway?
Presented by Glenn Chundrlek, Miami University
The word Agile gets thrown around a lot, but does anyone really know what it means, or is it just a way to sell whiteboards, sticky notes, and fancy software?  Glenn Chundrlek is a Scrum Master and Project Management Specialist at Miami University, and will try to strip away all the technical jargon and show how being Agile can help IT be a better partner in helping solve problems facing our institutions.

Injecting User Experience Techniques Into Our IT Services
Presented by Bob Black, Miami University
A variety of forces, such as remote work and shift to more cloud-based applications, move our organizations further away from the user experience. We have begun to use personas and user journeys as a way to connect our IT organization to the user experience.

Friday, May 12

The Workplace is Full of Humans: Miami IT's Focus on DEI
Presented by Elizabeth Parsons, Miami University
As one of the most diverse groups on campus, IT Services has long had a built-in need to examine our interactions with people from diverse cultures and backgrounds – our DEI programming has been and continues to be an important part of working in this division.    This presentation will focus on some of the activities that the Miami University IT Diversity Committee facilitates, some outcomes we have experienced, and what we hope to do better. Some examples include:    Undertaking an inclusive language project   Helping to develop a guide for managing (technological) identity at Miami  Hosting an annual “IT Diversity Film Fest”


Track 2: Instructional Technology / End User Support

Wednesday, May 10

Putting the whY Back in IT Communications & Planning
Presented by Randy Hollowell, Miami University
Change is hard. At least that is what we are told. The problem is, in today’s current higher education environment, it seems to be constant. At Miami University alone, in the next several years we will be:  Installing a new ERP system  Implementing new Google storage limits  Changing to a new Access and Identity management system  Initiating a new Endpoint Detection and Response system    And those are only the major initiatives.    So how do you engage your various audiences to pay attention to all of these changes, and efficiently communicate how each of them will be affected?    We have found one key is to focus on the WHY. Why are we doing this? Why is it important? Why should YOU care? Answering those questions is a great start to effective change management across the institution, getting customer buy-in, and engaging the student body.    This presentation will provide some tips and tricks that we have found helpful in preparing our audiences to the many changes that are to come. And we hope you will bring some of your own ideas to share with the group.

Connecting Front-line Employees to University Initiatives
Presented by Jeffrey Wolfe & Sally Smathers, Ohio University
Connecting the work of front-line employees to university-wide initiatives can be a challenge for any leader. However, front-line employees also have the highest total interactions with the user community, each an opportunity to focus on those initiatives in a small but meaningful way. We will discuss how the Ohio University End User Support team connected our daily work to a specific university initiative using goal setting framework while improving processes. Sharing what we learned over the previous year of this work hopefully will generate ideas for other end user teams to use and connect to their university initiatives.

Thursday, May 11

Take Your Task Sequences to the Next Level
Presented by Frank Wolz, Wright State University
SCCM task sequences are here to stay and believe it or not, that’s a good thing.  This session will discuss various methods and strategies to take full advantage of task sequences for deploying windows computers.  Create easily customizable and adjustable task sequences utilizing scripting and variables that can be maintained and configured outside of SCCM using more familiar tools like excel.  Implement concepts from object-oriented programming to provide for real-time, single-control testing of applications or operating systems in production sequences without duplication or risk of parallel sequences falling out of sync.

Demystifying Assistive Technologies
Presented by Laura Fathauer & Jill Bateman, Miami University/Ohio University
Assistive technology (AT) is any item, piece of equipment, software program, or product system that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of persons with disabilities. This session will review assistive technologies that are built-in to operating systems, as well as other assistive technology hardware and software. We will also demonstrate the barriers assistive technology users encounter with inaccessible applications and websites; a recent report on the top one million web pages found an average of 50.8 accessibility errors per page.

Friday, May 12

Engaging Instruction with Microsoft Surface Hubs in the Classroom
Presented by Mike Dombroski, Ohio University
This presentation will discuss the use of Microsoft Surface Hubs in learning spaces at Ohio University and the results that we found while running a pilot study on their use.


Track 3: Information Security

Wednesday, May 10

State Support of Cyber Education, and Protection of Education Networks & Data
Presented by Mark Bell, State of Ohio Adjutant General's Department
Learn about the programs and resources available from the State of Ohio to support Cyber Security education and workforce development, including cyber curriculum, the Ohio Cyber Range, and Ohio Cyber Clubs.  Also learn of State resources to help school systems better protect their networks and student information.

Networking is Relative: A CISO's Perspective in Higher Education
Presented by John Virden, Miami University
Perhaps the biggest multiplier of a modern information security program! Partnering - Collaboration - Networking - Relationships: All in the critical path to a successful, comprehensive, and easy information security program. This session shares the imperative value of vital relationships from the perspective of an information security office in higher education. Offers key techniques and tips to motivate, make, and maintain quality relationships. Concrete examples will be provided, solicited, and shared among the audience. Gain awareness of the necessary relationships that an information security office needs to promote and execute a successful security program.

Thursday, May 11

Ohio University Data Protection - Veeam Software Corporation
Presented by Rob Perry, Veeam, & David Belville, Ohio University
Learn how Ohio University utilizes Veeam to protect their data with virtual focus, diversity of media options, replication for quicker restoration, bridge to the cloud, and ransomware protection.

Information Security Approval Matrix: Bringing Order to Complexity
Presented by Jake Harrison & Tony Kinne, Miami University
This session begins with a brief overview of the important requirements of ensuring leadership is aware and involved in giving appropriate approvals of actions taken by information security professionals during actual or suspected cyber-related events in a clear, concise and consistent fashion. This is relevant as many events may be governed by compliance guidelines.  We will follow with a short introduction on the construction of the Information Security Approval Matrix (ISAM) including categories, discrete actions, and common approval entities.  There will be examples where the ISAM has been employed to seek appropriate guidance and approval to conduct a specified action.

Friday, May 12

Importance of Security Reviews: Increasing Compliance & Mitigating Risk
Presented by Dwayne Lewis, University of Cincinnati
This presentation aims to highlight the significance of security reviews in mitigating risk and increasing compliance. As universities rely on third-party vendors and service providers for critical business functions, it becomes essential to ensure that these entities have adequate security measures in place to protect sensitive data and assets.    The presentation will cover the following key topics:    

  • Understanding the need for security reviews.  
  • The benefits of security reviews, including increased compliance and mitigating risk.
  • Overview of security review methodologies and best practices.  
  • Open discussion with audience members to compile a best practice list that can be shared with other universities.

Track 4: Infrastructure (Networking / Virtual / Cloud / On-prem)

Wednesday, May 10

Email Migrations in a Flash
Presented by Doug Mills & Chris Klinger, Kent State University
Sharing how Kent State University tackled a student mail migration from Google G-Suite to Microsoft 365 using the native migration tools offered by Microsoft.  The use of these tools accompanied with using proprietary PowerShell scripts made for a more seamless end user transition.  We'll share the ups, down, and the how's as we navigated through this initiative. 

High Performance Computing Resources to Power Innovation
Presented by Chase Eyster, Ohio Supercomputer Center
An OH-TECH Consortium member, the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) delivers flexible, secure, and reliable computational power to our state's higher education institutions. Academic faculty and their students have access to on-demand high performance computing resources for research, data storage, and classroom projects at fully subsidized or highly reduced rates. Learn more about how campus IT and research support staff can engage with OSC's Campus Champions, Researcher Recognition, Classroom Support, hardware and software workshop, and Statewide Users Group programs. 

Thursday, May 11

How to Identify, Remediate, and Monitor Technical Debt
Presented by Ed Ashley, David Hinson, Megan Rosati, Muskingum University/Apogee
Technical debt is a common problem within higher education institutions' IT departments, where resources are stretched thin, infrastructure investment is often deprioritized, and patchwork, ad hoc solutions are the norm rather than the exception.    This session will feature David Hinson, Campus Chief Information Officer at Apogee, and Ed Ashley, Vice President for Finance at Muskingum University. Moderated by Megan Rosati from Apogee, we will take this opportunity to review, discuss and focus on the best practices to tackle technical debt. These processes include examining the elements of remediation and partnering to manage the rate at institutions that accumulate debt and the benefit to institutions like Muskingum University. 

University Research Technology Support - Round Table
Hosted by Philip Thomas, Kent State University
Significance and relevance of the topic for this conference.    University Research Support, is a challenging a necessary part of the University ability to get grants. This round table should discuss issues releated to building and supporting research clusters, Ohio Super Computer (HPC), Cloud research usage, security and general storage issues. NSF, NIH and other grant providing agencies are requiring more cross institutional involvement to get grants and the data that is collected is required to made available to the public. This round table will hopefully discuss these issues and possible solutions each institution is looking into for security and long term storage solutions.    

  • Clarity and value of the objectives for the session    
  • Learn what fellow institutions are doing for research support  
  • Compute HPC,Local Clusters, Cloud, OSG and others  
  • Big Data Storage Private/Public  
  • Cross Institution Collaboration  
  • Security      
  • Expressed learning outcomes for attendees    
  • Understating research support challenges facing different Universities in Ohio and possible solutions    
  • Data Storage Public/Private  
  • Security (Data Access)  
  • Compute HPC,Local Clusters, Cloud, OSG and others.  
  • Big Data Storage Private/Public  
  • Cross Institution Collaboration    

Friday, May 12

Legacy to Managed Lifecycle: An Infrastructure Story
Presented by Jason Bowling & Mark Byers, University of Akron
Over the past six years, the University of Akron Information Technology division has completely rebuilt most aspects of our IT infrastructure. We have moved from a fragile system with numerous single point of failure and no lifecycle management to a fault tolerant, flexible, and agile configuration. Security has been improved significantly, and lifecycle can be managed much more effectively. Over the same period of time, we have worked to develop a culture of ownership and trust at all levels of the infrastructure team. This presentation will cover the approach we took, results, and lessons learned.


Track 5: Enterprise Application Development & Support

Wednesday, May 10

Diminishing eSignature Costs While Maintaining User Experience at KSU
Presented by Amanda Kelley-Hurm & Gretchen Knapp, Kent State University
Modern eSignature platforms can be extremely costly.  By migrating from DocuSign to NextGen and Adobe, Kent State has been able to reduce costs and simplify the user experience.  The new tools helped eliminate irrelevant forms and provide additional cost savings across the university by re-evaluating each form for function and determining logic-based procedures.  Additionally, we were able to improve indexing within Xtender (BDMS), reducing the load on administrative staff.  Attendees will leave with the dos and don'ts of migrating away from DocuSign, as well as important questions to ask your users to determine the best fit for your university.  

Digital Displays - We Did it Our Way
Presented by Mark Anderson & Frank Wolz, Wright State University
With all the robust and expensive tools out there for controlling digital signage, what do you need?  Learn how our information technology and marketing departments collaborated to develop a custom in-house solution. Wright State transformed digital signage across two campuses utilizing existing Drupal content and PC management systems.

Thursday, May 11

Interns Using TDX iPaaS to Integrate and Automate IT Service Management
Presented by Emil Sayahi & Mahir Rahman, Miami University
Our Data Integration interns have done some amazing work in short order using the TDX iPaaS platform to integration our ITSM platform with others tools, to automate some manual activities, and to augment the ITSM platform with additional capabilities. They will showcase their work and how we approach using interns for this function.

Crowdsource the Enterprise - Everyone's a Developer
Presented by Myke Cooney & David Kendrick, Wright State University
When it comes to enterprise level internal business processes, empowering the SMEs in your organization can be the best-and sometimes the only-way to make headway toward modernizing and removing administrative time sinks.    In the presentation, we'll look at ways Wright State promotes ownership and buy-in by users to improve processes and manage Power Platform development- without a development team.

Friday, May 12

Sprint Through It: Using an Agile Approach to Run a Swift, Productive, and Successful RFP
Presented by Michelle Donaldson & Lindsey Ward, Ohio University
Learn how to leverage the benefits of Agile and Scrum strategies to run a complex request for proposal (RFP). Ohio University managed an RFP to evaluate learning management systems (LMS) using two-week sprints to successfully engage stakeholders while running a robust evaluation of products. We will share lessons learned from this process and facilitate discussion about how this approach could be relevant with different large-scale projects and in varied campus contexts. 


Vendor Sessions

Thursday, May 11

So, You Want to Ditch Your Hypervisor? - Cambridge Computer
Presented by Jeremy Palumbo, Cambridge Computer, & Erik Ball, Xavier
The world of virtualization has evolved, and now there are alternatives to VMware ESXi for OS and container virtualization. This has piqued the curiosity of organizations looking to explore new options. Our presentation will offer a framework to help you evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of making the switch. Additionally, we'll share the stories of your peers who have already taken this path, giving you insights into their experiences. By the end, you'll have the tools and knowledge needed to determine whether it's a sensible direction for your organization. Finally, we'll provide valuable guidance to ensure a successful implementation.

The Secure and Sustainable IT Lifecycle - Intel & MCPc
Presented by Rahel Dreikosen, Intel, & Ira Grossman, MCPc
The traditional security perimeter erodes as cyberthreats evolve and become more complex; the need for foundational, hardware-level security to supplement software-only security has never been greater.  Intel and MCPC will share higher education-related IT trends, best practices, and considerations for creating a secure, and sustainable supply chain and endpoint lifecycle management strategy. Our discussion will guide IT organizations on how to establish their specific maturity score related to IT lifecycle management, and sustainability and the follow-up strategies and tactics to close gaps against best practices, resulting in enhanced operational efficiency, improved and measurable sustainability, and data-driven visibility of the IT lifecycle.

The Deconstructed Classroom - SHI
Presented by Lori Whitt, SHI
Driverless car engineer, blockchain analyst, telemedicine professional, cloud architect, drone operator, digital content creator, and budtender, all careers that did not exist 10 years ago. Anyone entering the classroom today will not know a universe without touch functionality, from your phone to your refrigerator. When we look at education how have we changed from 50 years ago? From classroom redesign to central management of devices, to esports, it’s time to teach our students in ways that prepare them for the next 10 years and beyond.

Your Endpoints Have Something to Tell You.  Are You Listening? - Tanium
Presented by Doug Thompson, Tanium
A recent study revealed that a whopping 60% or more of breaches involved unpatched vulnerabilities.  75% of attacks in 2020 exploited vulnerabilities that had patches that had been available for over 2 years.  All of this despite spending more money than ever on point solutions to chase down threats once they are already inside.  Come learn how a converged endpoint management platform can unite Operations and Security to gain unmatched visibility and control of your endpoints.  

Security Programs that Thrive in Economic Uncertainty - Deepwatch
Hans Noordhuis, Deepwatch
Join Deepwatch’s Solution Director, Hans Noordhuis as he discusses strategies for changing the perception of security from a cost center to a business enabler and learn how managed services help organizations maintain or accelerate their SOC maturity and reduce risk while controlling costs.

Private 5G Wireless – Future Connectivity Now - Logicalis
Presented by Ray Clounch and Chris Calvert, Logicalis
As the name implies, private 4G/5G wireless network technology provides connectivity for non-public networks, such as universities, K-12 education and healthcare. It offers an alternative to wi-fi and other wireless options such as long-term evolution (LTE) and public 5G. In this session, Logicalis will review a variety of commonplace but essential use cases for Private Wireless Solutions and overview our offering that includes end to end services from site evaluation and implementation to ongoing operational support. Teaming with industry-leading Cisco certified Radio Access Network, Evolved packet core and user equipment providers, our private 5G can offer better coverage, core-initiated roaming and ultimately provide a more reliable and less expensive connection to workflow devices than has been achieved from wired and Wi-Fi options.  Come join us for this interactive discussion of solution and benefits for Private Wireless!